Windhover website wins accessibility challenge

In honor of Global Accessibility Day Awareness Day on May 16, NC State’s IT Accessibility Office conducted a month-long accessibility challenge to see which university websites could correct the most usability errors. Windhover, the student-led literary and visual arts magazine, tied for 1st place in the 1-500 pages division by correcting 2% of the site’s usability errors. Windhover shares the honor with the African American Cultural Center.

While 2% may not seem like an award-winning improvement, Crystal L. Tenan, NC State’s IT Accessibility Coordinator, explained when a website such as Windhover already has a high accessibility rate, even a small correction can be very impactful.

“I really didn’t do very much to improve accessibility on the Windhover site,” echoed Jamie Lynn Gilbert, Student Media’s Associate Director. “The main changes were I tweaked the text color to a slightly darker grey to better contrast with the website’s white background and reordered a few headings. It just shows how a little bit of effort can improve usability for visitors with visual impairments.”

Windhover took third place in the medium sites category (100-999 pages) in a similar accessibility challenge in 2015.